Twitter has announced that the two-factor SMS verification feature will be limited to accounts with a blue star who pay for the service and that this policy will begin at the end of next month. This step comes in the context of the company’s efforts to increase its revenues and reduce its expenses, especially after Elon Musk’s acquisition of it.
Although this feature is considered important for cybersecurity and to protect accounts from theft, sending text messages is financially costly to the company that sends the messages, as Elon Musk stated that this feature “exposed Twitter to defraud telecom companies at $20 million annually.”
And Twitter said that regular users will still be able to receive two-factor confirmation messages through the application through passcodes sent at the time of the confirmation request or through a password key.
Information security specialists criticized Twitter’s retraction of this step, considering that this threatens the security of individual accounts and exposes them to burglary and hacking. Some of them stated that the company should first find another way to confirm the binary and encourage its users before surprising them with this step.